Page:Chronicles of the Picts, chronicles of the Scots, and other early memorials of Scottish history.djvu/119

PEEFACE. cxi the Scots by the Pictish king, who were then driven back, and that in consequence of it their designation was narrowed from that of kings of Alban to that of kings of Dah-iada. The Dublin MS. of the " Annals " of Ulster " uses instead of " flight" the still stronger expression ofinmirge, or"expidsion;" and the expla- nation probably is, that the invading Scots extended themselves at first beyond Drumalban into the dis- trict termed Albania, and were driven back by the Pictish king in 560, and confined within the limits of Dalriada proper. Three years after this defeat, St. Columba came over from Ireland to Britain to con- vert the northern Picts. And we are now on historic ground, as his biographer Adomnan states that he appeared on his arrival, " coram Conallo rege, filio " Comgall." Bede and Walafred Strabo state that the island of lona was given to Columba by the Picts ; on the other hand, Tighernac states that it was given to him by Conall, king of Dalriada ; but if lona and the neighbouring islands formed a part of the territory which had been at first overrun by Scots, and from which they had been afterwards expelled by the Picts, it is intelligible enough that the British historians should have recorded the grant as having been made by the Picts, and that the Irish annalists should have equally confidently asserted that it had been made by the king of Dabiada. On the death of Conall, Columba solemnly inaugurated Aedan, the son of Gabran, king of Dal- riada ; and at the council of Drumceat, held in Ireland in the same year, he obtained that the kings